


cleaning up good, or trying to

by somefangirl



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23507149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somefangirl/pseuds/somefangirl
Summary: Fury says cleaning up is a good photo op. But Bruce hates pictures.
Kudos: 3
Collections: Everyday Heroes





	cleaning up good, or trying to

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enchantedsleeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enchantedsleeper/gifts).



Tony’s suit has been repaired, in what must be record time, and he struts about, looking once again like the future come to visit, and not at all like a man who fell out of the sky not too long ago. Beside him, grimacing, is Clint, and the intent look on his face is enough to keep the curious gathering crowd away, even if his bow and arrows look deceivingly harmless casually strapped to his back like that. There’s a faint halo of red near Natasha, who glances about uncomfortably, squinting in the glare, and slips into the shadows soon enough, away from Fury’s planned outing for the Avengers, as they’re all called now. _Bit of goodwill after what we did to this city_ , Fury said, when he talked them into it yesterday, and he looks, every inch of him, eyepatch included, to be in good humor.

The reporters crowd round; they always like to have Steve in the middle. Golden-haired, fresh-faced, deliciously solid. He clears rubble as easily as others lift their grocery bags.

Bruce picks at a few large pieces of the building that once stood at the corner of 40th and feels a little bad—did he do that? Probably. Most of it is a haze. The rush, the anger, the fear. It runs together. That can’t all be Hulk, right? It’s the fight, too, and the feeling deep inside— _this is something worth fighting for._

“They really made a mess, huh?” says a woman in a flat cap. Shrewd eyes and a sharp chin.

Bruce grunts.

“Rough day, yeah.” She kicks a rock, watches it flop over a few times. “Me too. Car’s gone and looks like I’m out of a job. They cleaned out the building we were in.”

“I’m sorry,” says Bruce automatically.

“What for?”

“Oh,” he says. “Um…” She doesn’t know. No one does, of course. That’s why he can be out here alone, brooding, as Fury has taken to calling it, while the rest of them do photo ops. No one knows the true face of the Hulk.

“The car or my job?”

“Shit,” he says.

“Yeah, that’s right.” She pulls out a phone.

He wants to back away. _No, I don’t do pictures, no I can’t, don’t make me—_

“Here,” she says, and she thrusts the phone out so quickly he can’t help but take it. On its small screen there’s a picture of him, and that seems even worse than people asking him to transform. He hates the pictures of him that crop up every once in a while. Hulk: green, angry, uncontrollable.

But it doesn’t look like that. It’s him against that brutalist skyscraper, perfectly framed, zooming towards Tony, looking like—well, an _Avenger_. 

“That’s a good picture,” he says, handing it back to her.

“There’s more,” she says.

He thumbs forward in time. A few shots of him sliding down the building, Tony a flash of red in his arms. 

“They’re yours if you want them.”

He frowns. “You didn’t take these on this thing.”

“No,” she agrees, patting something at her hip which he belatedly realizes is a camera bag. “In my ideal life, I’m a photographer. Day job’s IT. Luckily I don’t go anywhere without my baby.”

To get some of these shots, she had to have been running around in the mess. “You’re not gonna sell these?”

“I’ve got others,” she says, shrugging. “Of your friends.”

He opens the photo roll, scrolls up and down. There are things he’s amazed she captured. Here’s Clint, focused and deadly, and here’s Thor, slightly illuminated from the static of winding up his hammer. Bruce clicks open the photos of himself again. He looks... green. And heroic.

“You can sell this one, too,” he says.

“Nah. The others, maybe. But if you don’t want it, I’m putting it on my blog, right after the pictures of you wrecking my car.”

That’s only fair. He wonders what else they’ll find in the coming days, who else will have some picture of a moment he never expected to remember. “Did I really wreck your car?"

She grins, tucking the phone into a pocket. “You want to pay me back for it?”

He does, but that seems like a bad idea. There’s probably some sort of process for those types of claims. He can imagine Fury now—you did _what?_ Did you even get _proof_?

“It’s okay, Big Guy.” Her voice is slightly muffled as she screws a new lens onto the camera she’s unzipped from her bag. “Smile,” she says, and he does, easily. The shutter clicks.

She fiddles with the buttons on her camera for a bit, then gives him a thumbs up. “That’s good,” she says.

“Show me?”

She shakes her head and grins. “Photos After Everything,” she calls, as she backs up the street, towards Steve and Fury. “That’s my photoblog. Look it up!”

He thinks that he will.

**Author's Note:**

> For an everyday hero (:
> 
> Thank you to effietheant for a wonderful beta! I don't often write in MCU, so please excuse any weirdness with characters, incorrect references to canon, and so on!


End file.
